Bryan Fishel's Street-Legal Circle Track Car - Hot Rods

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2/3Bryan Fishel's family has been running Southern Modifieds speed shop for almost 20 years. Bryan has stepped down from driving on and off the track; Todd Gregory drives the car to most events.

Modifieds are some of the most powerful cars in local circle track racing. Getting one to run fast on the track is a tough job, but getting one to the street and keeping the lawman off of you might be just as tough. With a 7.25-inch, twin-disc clutch and retired Nextel Cup transmission, it's hard to keep this beast's 29x18.5-15 Hoosier Pro Street tires from spinning. The car, along with being street legal, is also competitive-it can be race ready in 20 minutes. The tires are sized so that when race tires are mounted, the car returns to its competitive ride height.

"That's why we didn't do all the work to hide wiring, and so on-so we can take about 10 to 20 minutes and run the car. We didn't want something that was street only," says Bryan Fishel, the car's owner.

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The car is completely legal and competitive with a curb weight of 2,728 pounds and a 370ci engine that makes 590 hp with 12.5:1 compression, a big roller cam, and a single 390-cfm carb. A Supertrapp muffler is all it needed to pass the DMV's inspection.

The idea for the car came from Todd Gregory and took a year to finish. With a checklist from the DMV, family and friends jumped in and added the trailer brake lights with operating signals (according to Bryan, this was the hardest part of the entire build), generic fog lamps up front, a speedometer (using a GPS, since a speedo is hard to hook to a Nextel Cup transmission), a horn, and a little hot rod-type windshield wiper to make the car street legal. Oh, and don't forget treaded tires.